Movie Thoughts: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

• Released: 17 December 2014
• Directed by: Peter Jackson
• Running time: 2 h 24 min
• Rating 3/5

Synopsis

The final battle for the Mountain has begun. Bilbo and the Company will now have to face war to protect themselves.

My Thoughts

Look, I love fight scenes in movies. One of the reasons Return of the King is my favorite Lord of the Rings trilogy movie is because of the great and epic battle scenes in it. But even I know when something is overkill. Case in point: this movie.

I've already talked about how three movies is probably a bit much to adapt the short Hobbit book into, but this movie really proves it. While the first two movies weren't perfect, I at least consider them pretty good because they had enjoyable journeys, conflicts and character moments. But this movie is almost entirely just characters preparing for battle, fighting said battle and after that the aftermath. But the battle itself takes up the vast majority of the film and it's exhausting.

It doesn't help that the battle itself isn't all that interesting, either. Return of the King had various battles fought with many different creatures, fronts and settings. What does Battle of Five Armies give us? Dwarves, elves and men just battling orcs and trolls again all in the same location. With some wargs thrown in, I guess. But the execution is just so damn boring. I didn't care for the vast majority of the action.

Look, like said before, I do like action/battle scenes. But this was too much. Especially when this time could've been spend developing other characters such as the underdeveloped dwarves. But there's practically no nice and quiet character moments in this film. There's a few between Bilbo and Thorin, one between Bilbo and Bofur, and of course some of that Kili-Tauriel nonsense, but outside of that the amount of character exploration moments is just thrown out the window in order for more poorly-CGI'd battle scenes.

That aside, the rest of the movie is also just the weakest out of the trilogy. Not just because of the boring battle that lasts too long, but also just the whole lack of character moments and variation in things going on. Movies one and two in the trilogy had so much changes of scenery and different scenarios the characters ended up in. What do we have in Battle of Five Armies? 90% just fighting in the exact same spot in front of Dale. 

The love triangle also (of course) ends with Kili dying and Tauriel gains no meaningful conclusion to her character "arc". The whole question about whether her love for Kili was real never even came up until he died, anyways, so there's not really an arc to speak of. She had the hots for a dwarf, he died, the end. She never got to do anything meaningful again because she's not in any other Lord of the Rings/Hobbit related media. What even was the point of this character if we were just going to do nothing meaningful with her at all?

This movie does have some good elements, don't get me wrong. It still has a 3/5 score; I don't think it's horrible or anything. I like the few character interaction moments we got, I like Thorin's arc of acting like a true king again (though I feel it could've been paced a bit faster), I like the funeral/coronation scene they somehow cut out of the theatrical cut. I like the quiet moment between Bilbo and Gandalf after Thorin's death and I like the final return to the Shire. But the fact that there's so much boring CGI battle nonsense going on just kind of overshadows any good moment this movie had.

So yeah, I like this movie, I don't hate it. But I'm not a fan, either, and it's by far the weakest Hobbit movie if you ask me.